5 Things You Never Knew About Carrie Bradshaw

For Sex and the City fans who were totally bummed to learn the franchise is dunzo (it's official — there won't be a third movie), we have the next best thing. Summer and the City, Candace Bushnell's second prequel to the show we're all still obsessed with. We got Bushnell to give us some juicy bits about the Carrie we never knew — stuff even diehard SATC fans would never even guess...

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1. She Cooks!

"When you're 25, things that you did when you were 17 are surprising. These books let me add a layer of complexity to the characters that everyone thinks they know so well," says Bushnell. Way back when, Carrie didn't use her oven as extra storage space for her Manolos. She actually used it to cook. So when Samantha asks Carrie to cook up a big dinner to pass it off as her own to impress her then-fiancé (Yup! : At one point Samatha actually wanted to be a Mrs.), Carrie agrees. She pulls off a delicious meal—lamb chops in a mushroom cream sauce with sides of asparagus and potatoes, and sneaks out the service entrance to let Samantha take full credit.

2. She Was Clueless About Sex.

You may know Carrie as the columnist "who knows good sex….and isn't afraid to ask." But young, naïve 17-year-old Carrie's tagline would sound more like "who doesn't know squat about sex...but isn't afraid to pretend she's way more experienced than she is." OK, that probably wouldn't fit on a bus, but it does make for some hilarious scenes. Like when Carrie convinces Bernard, a divorced guy in his thirties, that she's a sophomore in college so he'll date her. Bushnell shared, "In this novel, we start to see how Carrie develops this hopeless attraction to successful guys." In this book, Carrie's new boyfriend comes with some serious baggage and the relationship is rocky from the start. Sounds familiar!

Forget Chanel, Carrie Bradshaw used to wear scrubs. "I based all of Carrie's outfits in the novel on clothing I actually owned and wore myself. Even the ridiculous and hideous-sounding ones," says Bushnell. That included hospital scrubs and one particularly awesome-sounding white vinyl jumpsuit, which she Carrie wears on her first trip out to the Hamptons. "The show was all high-end labels and designers, but this book is full of retro fashions that will crack you up," Bushnell teases.

4. She Almost Gives Up on New York.

Remember that episode of Sex and The City when a hideous pic of Carrie winds up on the cover of New York Magazine, under the title, "Single and Fabulous?" She has one of those moments in this novel too. She writes a play during her summer session at The New School and plans a big reading, and invites lots of New York society types she's met, thanks to her older boyfriend. And she totally flops. She writes, "They say that people in stressful situations can lose their perception of time, and that's what happens to me. In fact, I seem to lose all my senses, because at first I have no awareness of sight or sound. Then I become conscious of a few chuckles from the front row...I notice people getting up and leaving their seats. Then I realize the laughter is not due to my play, but to something funny someone said in the back of the room. Then someone turns up the music..." The Post reported that Carrie's reading was worse than a high school Christmas pageant. Ouch. "Carrie wants to make it in NYC, she wants to be recognized," Bushnell notes. "But mostly, she wants someone to say, 'You're special.' So this is a bit of a setback for her." Carrie packs her bags and gears up for her first semester at Brown University...Until Samantha Jones calls to remind her that no publicity is bad publicity, and that an editor at a New York paper has been calling for Carrie. The rest is Sex and the City history.

5. She Loses Her Virginity at 18.

We're not going to give away who Carrie loses her virginity to—but, yes, it does happen in this book. And it's way better than she expected. "In The Carrie Diaries, she wasn't ready," says Bushnell. "In this book, at 18, she is." Carrie enjoyed pretty much every second about her first time, she writes, "He kept telling me how beautiful I was...And how happy he was to be with me." Although we don't know much about the rest of Carrie's college career, we know one thing for sure—there's a lot more good sex in her future..